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Topic: Project: Monster in a Box (Read 1235 times)

So this year I decided to do something special for halloween and inspired by a trip to Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire I decided to make a monster in a box.

So first off a simple box. Some rough cut lumber and a few nails later (yeah it's never that easy). This box was rather large as I had planned to have some other effects, but time ran short. I'll save the tentacle monster for next year

Next up was a way to lift the lid and bang it a bit randomly. The tooths are random in start time and 'drop' time, but all the same heights. The extra large turn is to give the eyes a chance to peek out. Of course there's always were a few snags... over tightened the shaft coupler and cracked the PLA... Rebuilt in ABS and off we go.

Here is a picture of the lid raising mechanism fully assembled.

And another shot of the box, with the roller which rides along the 'saw-blade' wheel

The lighted eyes were on loan so I couldn't hack the wires. To get them to light up at the correct time I needed to switch the power on and off via the Arduino. I took an extension cord and hacked it adding in a relay and some leads that go off to the Arduino. Between the relay and the Arduino I have an L293D to handle the voltage and protect the Arduino.

There were a lot of different effects that I wanted. I ended up using almost every single available pin in the Arduino.